


lie up, and survive

by another_Hero



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: I only write fic when I'm sleepy so I only write very sleepy fic, M/M, Sleep, it's so sleepy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 04:02:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19221184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/another_Hero/pseuds/another_Hero
Summary: “Alexis is sick.”“Like, a cold, or?”“Yep, a cold, mm-hmm.”Patrick waited.“She’s at the coughing stage.”Patrick waited.“She was at the coughing stageall night.”Patrick tugged his sunglasses off softly and folded them and put them in his bag and put a gentle hand on his face and David was going to cry, but he was really fucking not going to cry.“I’m very tired.”“I know. But your face looks impressively normal.”David pressed his lips together and pressed his eyes together and nodded. “I know you’re making fun of me, but I did very thorough skincare this morning.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title is from "First Lesson" by Philip Booth, which I memorized in high school and basically haven't thought of since until this day when I was trying to come up with a sleepy text

Patrick was talking to a customer when David walked into the store, which just…no, that wasn’t what he wanted at all. He didn’t really manage, or try, to return the quick smile Patrick shot him; he was too tired. He didn’t take off his sunglasses; he wanted to keep that last protective barrier between him and the world, even here in the store, because the store may be perfect on its own but _people_ came here. David walked around behind the counter and set down his bag and the day hadn’t started but already he had the feeling of wanting to crawl under his desk, so he did.

At the gallery, he had kept an extra cushion under his desk, for when he needed to curl up under there. But there were a couple of shelves under the register counter, and he could sit on the bottom of the cabinet, almost at the floor, as long as he leaned forward onto his legs. It was better than nothing. Patrick came over to check out the customer, and David didn’t move for him.

When the bell rang and the customer was gone, Patrick knelt down in front of David, who tried not to think about the floor and his knees because this was their store and the floor was clean. “You okay there, David?”

David didn’t want Patrick to think he was sad, even though he was, because it wasn’t one of the kinds of sad that counted. He couldn’t explain that something had happened and feel Patrick’s arms come around his back, because nothing had happened at all. He would get more sympathy for being tired. “Alexis is sick.”

“Like, a cold, or?”

“Yep, a cold, mm-hmm.”

Patrick waited.

“She’s at the coughing stage.”

Patrick waited.

“She was at the coughing stage _all night_.”

Patrick tugged his sunglasses off softly and folded them and put them in his bag and put a gentle hand on his face and David was going to cry, but he was really fucking not going to cry.

“I’m very tired.”

“I know. But your face looks impressively normal.”

David pressed his lips together and pressed his eyes together and nodded. “I know you’re making fun of me, but I did very thorough skincare this morning.”

“Ah.” It was practically a whisper.

David leaned into the hand. He wanted Patrick to hold him up.

“How long are you going to need to sit here, do you think?”

“Impossible to say, really.”

“All right, if I go get you a coffee, do you think you can sit someplace you can see the door in case any customers come in?”

David considered the offer and nodded.

“Okay.” Patrick kissed his forehead, right on his hairline, which was too sensitive right now, like the skin would tear if you even brushed against it, and did Patrick know that his gentleness was just barely keeping him from splitting David open? “I’m going to go get you a coffee, and then we’re going to get through this workday, okay, because that’s what we have to do for the store.”

“Fine.” It didn’t have any volume when he said it, so he tried again. “Fine.”

“And then you can come home with me and we’ll watch Practical Magic and sleep.” Patrick was too far away; Patrick should be all around him. David shouldn’t be allowed to be at work like this. He couldn’t do what he had to do for the store. He was so folded together here; it was the only way to fit under the desk, but he didn’t want to be under the desk anymore, he wanted to be on Patrick on Patrick’s couch. He slid out as much as he could without sliding onto the floor.

“Um, I actually think Practical Magic might be too much for me tonight, so.”

“Ten Things I Hate About You, then.”

David pinched his eyes and mouth closed and nodded a few times, fast, and said okay. And then Patrick stood up and was holding a hand out to him. He took it. He stood up too. He was going to take care of his store.

 

When Patrick handed him a coffee, David burst into tears.

Patrick chuckled a little, but he put the coffee on the table and put his arms around David, and he probably should have just started with crying when he first came inside, honestly, because this was what he was hoping for the whole time. He didn’t reach up; he felt too ridiculous, and too sleepy. He just leaned.

“You’re really tired, huh?”

David nodded.

“Are you worried about Alexis?”

“No.” David wasn’t crying anymore—it had just been a weird thing, the kind of weird thing that happens, that went away once his eyes were closed and he was standing as much on Patrick’s feet as his own—but he sure as hell wasn’t moving away, so his answer was a little muffled in Patrick’s shirt.

“Do you want to work up here or go unpack the deliveries?”

Maybe if he didn’t move, he could stay here and so would Patrick.

Patrick kissed his neck, then stepped back. David groaned. Patrick put the coffee in his hand. “It’s your choice, David.”

“Is there a choice where I just try again tomorrow?”

“Nope, but once we’re done for the day, I promise you can be as mopey as you want.”

David scowled. “I’m not mopey, I’m sad. And I’m only sad because I’m tired.” Sad was real. Mopey was affected and probably annoying.

“Can you not be both?”

“I don’t like you.”

“So I’m thinking maybe you don’t want to work with the customers today?”

David sighed. “That’s correct.”

“So I’m thinking you want to go unload that delivery?”

David groaned. “When did _you_ become the boss of today?”

“When you abdicated,” Patrick said sweetly, and kissed him, and said, “Just get to the end of the day.”

“But it’s the very _beginning_ of the day,” David complained, even though Patrick was right, the asshole.

“You’re not telling me you never managed a work day on no sleep and a hangover, David, I won’t believe that.”

“If you can get me some uppers—”

“I got you a coffee.” There was the same fond-but-laughing smile again, and David, in spite of himself, was smiling a little too, and saying a coffee was not a replacement for connections at the FDA, and he wanted to stay here with Patrick but he also wanted the store to keep running maybe more than he wanted anything else or ever had.

“Fine,” he said. “I will unload…a box.”

A customer came in; suddenly David was glad to disappear.

 

The situation became untenable around two in the afternoon. He was listening to be sure Patrick wasn’t too busy to handle everything, but in the stockroom, nothing felt all that urgent. So David swept a square of floor and let himself sit down.

He knew immediately that it had been a mistake. He was never going to move again. He couldn’t have made himself stand if he wanted to. But eventually Patrick was going to come in here and see him sitting like this, and…David didn’t want to disappoint him, and he didn’t want to ruin the store with his negligence, but he also didn’t want to be made to get up.

He looked at the shelves. Maybe things had been sold and needed to be restocked. He could stand up, he could go find the gaps on the table and the shelves, he would be moving and working, he could come back here and fill them in. Patrick had been with customers since the last time he came back here, and David tried to be motivated by his—extremely reasonable, frankly professional—distaste for gaps and unevenness. But his head was so heavy, and he thought maybe he was shaking, and it was miserable that he still had to be here but he loved it here and if he couldn’t handle a night of interrupted sleep then how would he ever manage to keep the store open more than the six months he had traditionally been able to devote to new hobbies like dressmaking or building terrariums or soul cycle before he started to feel like he ought to be better by now than he was and gave up entirely—and he was too tired for the anxiety to form its tense coils in his chest and his neck and the back of his head, and instead it swam all through him, this slow exhausted worry, and surely there were hours left before he could be lying down and wrapped in a blanket and Patrick holding him and agreeing to watch, because David had spent the whole morning on this choice, While You Were Sleeping. He was so tired that sitting wasn’t boring. He didn’t take out his phone.

But he could hear Patrick when he came back. “Hey, David,” he said, “you want to…help me with this?”

“I do? I do,” David said, and reached his arms forward a little bit. They fell back down.

“There’s a cookie up at the register that’s all yours if you can get to it.”

“That’s abuse,” said David. “This is an abusive relationship.”

“Getting you a cookie?”

David sighed and rolled his knees to the side and tried to sit up on them and tried to push himself up to standing.

Patrick kissed him and said, “Very good.”

“Fuck you.”

“Maybe tomorrow, David, you seem pretty tired right now.”

David held out his two hands. “What do you want me to carry?” Patrick set a bottle of body milk in each one.

“Somebody bought two body milks?” They were a good product, but the bottles weren’t small.

“Two people bought body milk.”

 “Okay, don’t judge me, my sister has the plague, and we were not raised with this level of exposure to other people’s diseases.”

“Who knows what she could have contracted, David? Today a cold, tomorrow—”

“Okay, I’m going where the cookie is.”

He did at least put the body milks where they belonged—he wasn’t so abjectly disgusting as to leave them at the register counter. It was a snickerdoodle, because Patrick was in love with him, actually. And oh, yeah, that was how come the store was going to stay open, because Patrick made him seem good at running it. He wondered whether Patrick was in love with the store or only him. He didn’t know how to ask that, but it seemed important. Maybe it wouldn’t when he had slept; maybe it just felt urgent the way things do when you’re drunk, and it would fade. He typed ‘patrick love store’ into the Notes app for later.

Patrick broke off a piece of David’s cookie. David just stared at him, but Patrick wasn’t eating it. He shrugged. “I hoped a little indignation might wake you up,” he said, moving his hands too fast. But he held it to David’s lips. “No such luck.” David ate it, but that was not normal store activity. Patrick moved behind him and rubbed his hands out David’s shoulders and over his back until he leaned back into him and Patrick wrapped his arms around David’s chest and kissed his neck and murmured, “If any customers come in, you’re going to have to let me go.”

“Mm.” All David had wanted to do all day was cuddle and cry, but the cuddling made him want to cry less. He broke off another bit of the cookie. He wasn’t sure why he had to stay, when Patrick was here, but he didn’t really want to leave while Patrick was here.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tiem for sleps

When the day was over, when Patrick had closed out and David had halfheartedly swept the floor, he stood helpless and unmoving. Maybe there was something else they needed to do, and how was he going to walk all the way to Patrick’s? It was basically three blocks.

“Hey,” Patrick said, and took his hand. David looked down at it. In Patrick’s other hand was his overnight bag. “I’m afraid if I hug you, you’ll fall asleep, and then we’ll both collapse.”

“That would—probably happen, yeah,” David said faintly.

“You survived the day.”

“Can you magically transport me to a couch? Or a bed? Or, like, a cushion, on the floor?”

Patrick kissed him; Patrick was _amused_ by this. “I can promise you that there will be pizza if you can make it back. I mean, not right away, I’ll have to order it. But there will be pizza.”

Part of David knew that objectively, Patrick should not be responsible for getting him pizza; the bigger part of David was very disappointed that there was not pizza already. Patrick moved toward the door, and because his hand was in Patrick’s, David followed.

Walking helped, a little. Walking made it easier to walk, and knowing everyone in town could see him made it easier too. At Patrick’s, he pushed the button on the elevator even though they usually took the stairs, and Patrick didn’t say anything, and then they were down the hall and the door was unlocked and David was lying on the couch.

Patrick took his shoes off, one and then the other. David pressed his face against the pillow because his eyes were prickling and he didn’t know what to do about having his shoes taken off. He was wearing jeans. He wanted to have the jeans taken off. Patrick was too far away to touch, but David could hear him. Then he was coming closer, he was beside the couch, his hand was on David’s shoulder. “David,” he said, “can you sit up?”

No. David shook his head, and then he sat up. Patrick pulled gently on his sweater and managed to work it off over his head. This was what you did for a sick person, you took off their clothes for them and helped them into clean clothes. Not David; David listened to a sick person cough all night and complained about it in the morning. This was how you took care of someone if you knew how, and the anxious bit of David overtook the exhausted part enough for him to grab the long-sleeved shirt from Patrick’s hands and pull it on himself. He looked up—he hadn’t really been looking before—to see if Patrick seemed upset, but Patrick didn’t seem upset, he seemed capable, folding the sweater, matter-of-fact. He noticed David looking and smiled a little, no kind of a smile, not a reassurance or a performance, almost absent-minded. He knelt by David’s legs and undid the button and zip of his jeans, which he had worn in a halfhearted attempt to make himself feel properly dressed and not like a hag about to die of cholera on the floor of the store—cholera had one of the more disgusting deaths, he thought, probably. “Sit up?” And Patrick slid the jeans down his thighs and pulled them off, one calf at a time, and this was too much, David was not composed enough today to process this kind of tenderness, and so he let it continue. There were soft pants. Patrick was in shorts somehow—David didn’t realize he’d had time to change. There was a computer on the coffee table, and Patrick’s phone. And Patrick sat on the couch one leg behind David, and he pulled David right onto him, and then his arms were over David, and then one of his legs, Patrick was everywhere.

“I’ve been waiting all day for this,” Patrick mumbled in his ear.

“Mm?” _Why didn’t you do it earlier?_ he thought, but he knew why. There were things you did, to run a store, and just because David couldn't do them, that didn't mean they didn't need to be done.

Patrick didn’t expand. “Did you want to watch a movie?”

“No.” It didn’t come out sounding like a word. He should have gone to the bed, instead of the couch, really, but it was farther away, and Patrick wouldn’t pull David up over him. Anyway, Patrick didn’t make any moves for the computer. His right arm was brushing over David’s back, and usually David would love the way the movement of his hand felt like a reminder, but he was so much too tired for that. He grabbed it with one hand and held it in place. It was incredible that he wasn’t asleep. It hurt, not being asleep, it was hurting him, and he whined, and then one of Patrick’s hands was in his hair, and he wondered whether he could get Patrick to kiss his head, far back on it, the hair part, and he pushed himself up the couch.

Patrick chuckled. Patrick’s lips were against his scalp. “You okay?” Patrick asked.

“Mm.” This was all he could take. Patrick kissed his head again. David wondered whether maybe he also wanted Sandra Bullock after all, but no, he could hear Patrick breathing. That was the correct sound. Anything else would drill into his ears until they bled.

 

It was dark when David woke up, except for Patrick’s phone.

“Hey,” said Patrick, and an arm brushed all the way down his side. “You want me to get a pizza now?”

“Yes please,” David mumbled, and then, “What time is it?”

“Nine.” All right, there was still time to have a pizza delivered, even in Schitt’s Creek. Patrick called the place, because you had to do that around here, make calls to get pizza instead of filling in some form online where you never actually had to talk to anyone. David’s head went up and down with Patrick’s chest as he talked.

“Do you want me to get up?” asked David. He was probably cutting off the circulation to Patrick’s left leg.

“I like you here. I am getting thirsty, though.” But Patrick’s arms got tighter around him, and Patrick’s head tickled David’s hair, and he said, “Are you feeling a little better?”

“Mm.”

“Is it okay that I didn’t send you home?”

“Mm. I’m not sure I did the store much good.”

“That’s okay.”

David was pretty sure that technically it wasn’t. It wasn’t okay to him. He should have been—responsible. For the store, of all things, he should have managed to be competent and reliable and kind on zero sleep. He slid down, away from Patrick’s face, pressing his head into the gap between their bodies and the couch. But Patrick’s arm came up to catch him, and he couldn’t dive in too far. Nothing about Patrick holding him was passive now; he was securely in place. And it would have been a great relief, except that Patrick was tilting toward him, murmuring, “Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” when David wanted to dissolve into the couch.

And everything insulating David felt too thin today, and maybe that was why he tried—“I wanted to be able”—before he gave up.

“Able to what, to work on no sleep?”

Well, yes, if he hadn’t gotten any sleep. “It’s like—”

Patrick waited, and Patrick had an impressive capacity for waiting, if he thought David was going to tell him something he wanted to know at the end of it, and the pizza people were really fucking slow. He lifted his head out enough for his voice to be clear, but he stayed facing the couch cushion.

“It’s like, why can’t there be, I don't know, a sexy antagonist, maybe a Sandra Bullock type, but it’s just _me_ that makes it hard—”

After a moment, Patrick said, “You want Sandra Bullock to try to do you harm?” but gently, prompting, with a little scratch at his neck.

“I just, sometimes it feels like I’m fighting myself, to be able to—manage, in the store, and I just want to do it.” He hid his face again. “I think I care about it so much, and then I get like today.” Patrick might not be able to make out what he was saying, but he’d get the gist. David pressed further into the gap between Patrick and the sofa cushions.

Patrick wouldn’t let go of him, but his grip relaxed and he slid a little bit and rolled a little bit until they were on their sides and facing each other. Patrick was pressing David against the back of the couch, blocking everything else from reaching him. When the silence came back, he said, “David?”

David didn’t look up at him; he kept his face right where it was, half-lodged in a pillow and right up against Patrick’s chest. “I just wish I wasn’t like this, sometimes.”

He thought it would be muffled, but clearly Patrick heard: his arm against David’s back got tighter; his belly and chest expanded in a slow breath. But then he slid down the couch so his face was level with David’s half-hidden one. He kissed the corner of David’s eye, the corner of David’s mouth, before retreating to rest his head. “Can you tell me what you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

Patrick set three kisses under his ear. “I don’t,” he said, his mouth right there, “I love how you are,” and with a quick swipe of his tongue behind David’s earlobe, he pulled back, which, no, that wasn’t what he was supposed to do. David squirmed. Patrick did, though, he knew perfectly well what David meant. He was making a game of it to try to get David to talk, and it wasn’t going to work.

It might work. He peered out from behind the pillow with one eye, and Patrick was just there, very close to his face because there was only so much room on the couch, watching. He ducked back into the pillow again, even farther.

Patrick chuckled, and then his lips were back where David’s hair met his neck, a too-soft place. David scrunched his shoulders and immediately, when Patrick pulled away again, wished he hadn’t. He grabbed onto Patrick’s shirt and tugged it toward him. “I’m not going anywhere,” Patrick said.

Patrick’s phone rang.

“Oh,” he said warmly, “that’s the pizza. I guess I am going somewhere.” David let go of his shirt when he had to, for the sake of pizza, and Patrick’s hand cupped the back of his neck, and then he was gone.

David sat up; he had no choice about that. His head was full of wet sand. But he didn’t feel too off to eat.

 

Then, after the pizza and skincare and teeth brushing, David lay in bed waiting for Patrick and desperate to sleep. Patrick slid into the bed in front of him, which—“You’re on the wrong side.”

“Yep.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I wanted to be facing you.”

The lights were off. David’s mouth opened soundlessly. Then: “Just tell me to turn over.”

“Then your back would be to the door, David, you wouldn’t stay like that for long.” Patrick was whispering, which didn’t seem strictly necessary; it was barely 10pm. But David appreciated his commitment to the sleep concept.

“Okay, well, someone _staring_ at me might also make it harder to fall asleep.”

“Yeah.” Patrick had a hand on David’s face, and he moved it up to scratch through his hair. The other hand had smoothed across his chest and was now brushing over his shoulder. “I’ll go away whenever you want.” Both hands stilled as he came up to kiss David’s forehead, a line above his eyebrows and a line below his hairline, and the retort died in David’s throat.

He reached for Patrick’s back and tugged him closer.

“I love you,” Patrick whispered into his hair. “I’m sorry you had a hard day.”

“Mm.” It would have been nicer to respond in kind, but David wasn’t awake enough. He didn’t want to be; he was going to sleep so he could run his store. He tucked his head under Patrick’s chin, which earned him a big breath in Patrick’s chest and an arm on his back.

“I love you,” Patrick repeated. “Go to sleep.” David did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They have different bed sides at Ray’s and at Patrick’s, based on the tiny bit we see of them in bed at those places, and this bothers me. For the purposes of the door comment, I ignored canon 100%.

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout to the sc discord for coming up with some quality past hobbies for David
> 
> rereading this I was like "wow I have Patrick saying David's name a lot" but you know what he thinks it's a pet name and who am I to suggest otherwise


End file.
